Ecommerce Terminology Guide
Abandoned Cart:
When a visitor places a product in a shopping cart, but does not complete a checkout process to purchase the product, the cart is deemed "abandoned" by the shopper.
Affiliates or Third Party Affiliates:
In terms of web marketing, business partners that help drive traffic indirectly to a website. The owner of a website will pay an affiliate a commission each time he directs a visitor from his site to the business owner's site, usually through the form of a link. Having a successful affiliate program can help drive traffic to a website considerably, improve search engine optimization, and ultimately generate more leads or increase conversion rates for a business.
Analytics:
Tools that provide the owner of a site with statistical information about visitors and traffic.
Anchor Text:
Describes the visible characters and words that hyperlink to another document or web location.
Architecture:
The "blue-print" of a site and the manner in which it is ultimately designed. The architecture of an online storefront generally includes a shopping cart at the top right have corner of every page, for example.
Bounce:
A visitor who hits a landing page, stays for a few seconds, then hits the "back" button in order to return to search engine page.
Conversion or Conversion Rate:
The conversion of a lead to a sale. When an online shopper visits a site, but does not purchase anything, the shopper did not "convert" into a sale. While a retail site may get hundreds of thousands of hits a day, the conversion rate for visitors who purchase items is usually a very small percentage of those hits (On average, 98 percent of online shoppers browse sites, but do never make purchases, leaving a 2 percent conversion rate on the web). Analyzing the habits of the two percent that do convert can help retailers focus on tactics to increase their conversion rate.
Channels:
Online marketplaces to sell products along side a web store. Examples of channels include Amazon.com, eBay.com, and Craigslist.org. Channels help maximize potential sales and increase exposure to potential clients.
Checkout by Amazon (Amazon Payments):
An alternative payment method that allows online shoppers to purchase from independent merchant sites quickly and securely using their Amazon account.
CMS (Content Management System):
The system by which users can easily control content on the site, whether it be product classifications, subcategories, blogs, editorial feeds, etc.
*ShopVisible's CMS eliminates the need for site owner's to learn how to write code. The system also easily exports website content into Word or Excel and easily imports content from other applications onto the website.
Cross Sell/Up Sell Items:
“Would you like fries with that?” Cross-Sell and Up-Sell items are products/accessories you offer that may intuitively complement the offered product. A customer purchasing a chair may not realize that you offer a fitted cushion, or a side table that completes the set. Cross-selling and up-selling gives you the opportunity to expand the customer’s options to purchase more relevant items from your store. Additionally, if customers realize that you offer more than just the item they are purchasing, it may encourage them to shop around more on your site.
Customer Generated Content:
Content on a website written by customers, either in the form of client testimonials, product ratings, or reviews. Studies show that consumers are more likely to make purchases at storefronts with customer generated content, because online shoppers trust each others opinions over business marketing materials.
Cyber Monday:
Whereas Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) is known as the biggest retail-shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday, or the Monday after Thanksgiving is known as one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. People heading back to school or work after vacation hit the web to shop for the holiday season.
eCommerce:
Electronic commerce composed of buying and selling both products and services through the Internet and other computer networks; electronically conducted retail which takes place in virtual stores.
Embedded video:
A means of physically inserting video clips into applications so that they play within the presentation.
Forums:
Online discussion boards where members post questions about specific topics, and receive feedback from others in their “niche” community (anything from horse lovers to small business owners). The goal of the forum is to provide a haven for genuine communication, a place where advice seekers can consult experts, or where people with similar experience levels can share knowledge on matters pertaining to niche topics.
Google Checkout Integration:
Allows customers to buy items quickly and securely across multiple channels using a single Google username and password; can be used to charge customer credit cards, track orders and receive payment.
Google PageRank:
An algorithmic probability distribution often used to depict the likelihood that a random person clicking on links will navigate to a particular page; by utilizing the democratic nature of the web and judging in-bound links as indicators for page value and strength, Google will interpret links from Page A to Page B as "votes." Thoroughly constructed links and votes, those marked by quality not quantity, impact PR more so than do numerous poor quality ones.
Inbound Links:
Hyperlinks transiting domains; links from sites outside one's site, to their site. Also known as "incoming links."
In-site Search:
A search box within a site that allows visitors to search for content or information pertaining to the site.
Live Chat:
A feature on a website, usually in the form of a pop-up window, that allows visitors and agents to instant message each other on a storefront. Live Chat is most commonly used to offer assistance to visitors with questions on a site, the same way a sales associate or customer service representative would assist visitors in a brick and mortar store.
Meta-descriptions:
The Meta description tag describes your site's content, giving search engines' spiders an accurate summary filled with multiple keywords. The Meta description tag is especially important because it's the only tag supported by some engines.
Meta-tags:
HTML tags used by search engines to permit accurate site indexing; while Meta-Tags do not affect page display information, they do indicate page creation, updates, keywords and page abstract.
Mobile Commerce:
The ability to sell products through mobile phones. An e-commerce platform with mobile commerce allows clients to send SMS messages to customers inviting them to make a purchase directly from their phone, or offering promotional codes redeemable on the client website.
Organic or Natural Search:
As opposed to Paid Search in which a business pays for ad space at the top of search results (the grayed results on the top of google search for example) natural search refers to the search rankings generated by.
Outbound Links:
Link's on one's own site connecting to other sites. Also known as "outgoing links."
PCI or PCI compliance:
"Payment Card Industry" compliance is a multi-faceted security standard including requirements for security management, policies and procedures, network architecture, and software design with relation to how companies and organizations proactively protect customer account data.
Popularity:
The relative importance, measured via citation (the act of one work referencing another, as often occurs in academic and business documents) of a given document that matches the user's query. The popularity of a given document increases with every other document that references it.
Relevance:
The degree to which the content of the documents returned in a search matched the user's query intentions and terms. The relevance of a document increases if the terms or phrase queried by the user occurs multiple times and shows up in the title of the work or in important headlines or sub-headers.
RSS Feed:
"Really Simple Syndication;" a format for distributing and content gathering from web sources e.g. newspapers, magazines and blogs; utilized by web publishers for news feeds including links, summaries and headlines.
Scalability:
The ability for an application to function well when a business grows considerably in size. "Scalable" e-commerce platforms function well when visitor traffic or order numbers dramatically increases in a short period of time.
SEO:
An acronym for Search Engine Optimization, SEO is the process involved in raising a website's position in search results naturally (without Paid advertisements) from search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Statistics show that the higher a website's rank in search, the more traffic the website will generate. Ideally, its important for a website to rise within the first couple pages of search results, as the vast population of web users rarely ever click past the first few pages.
ShopBots:
Comparison-shopping programs commonly used to list a myriad of items based on price. An online shopper looking for an inexpensive camera could go to a ShopBot site to find the cheapest ones available. Shopbots are ideal for bargain-hunters.
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Site Manager:
The ShopVisible user-friendly interface with a customizable dashboard. The user console is the single source center for all business needs including, but not limited to, content management, channel management, analytics, marketing, IT, back office, and customer service.
URL:
"Uniform Resource Locator," or the web's global address for documents and other Internet resources. The address begins with a "protocol identifier" while the second part represents the "resource name," specifying IP address or the Domain name.